Pete Carroll may be 'disappointed' in Mark Sanchez, but can he say it out loud?By Matt Hinton Via Adam Rose at the L.A. Times, here's Pete Carroll at Mark Sanchez's "I'm Going Pro" press conference today, taking his quarterback to task for going "against the grain":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGCMZKniks&eurl=http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Pete-Carroll-may-be-disappointed-in-Mark-Sanch?urn=ncaaf,134&feature=player_embeddedI would describe the coach here as brutally honest yet patient -- he showed up, and he did at least say he was "thrilled" for Sanchez. Then again, I don't know Pete Carroll, so perhaps I can't always tell when he's angry (well, sometimes I can). Trojan beat writer Scott Wolf, for example, described the scene as "pathetic":USC coach Pete Carroll was extremely ungracious during the Mark Sanchez press conference. He stormed out of the room and did not even sit at the table before Sanchez addressed the media. Something he never did when Matt Leinart, etc., announced their decisions.Carroll never sat down at the table but stood with his palms on the table. His anger was clear if you spend time around him.Not a great moment.Wolf is not known as "Caesar's" biggest fan, but Rose agreed that Carroll was "peeved," and that seems to be the reaction that's picking up steam. Sanchez is earning his degree this spring (from the Annenberg School of Communication, which ain't no joke), and he said all the right things today. I don't know where Sanchez is going to be drafted or what kind of career he'll have, but it seems an especially inopportune time for his coach to tell to a rapt media audience, essentially, "I expect this kid to fail." I don't know what else he could mean by pointing out the "less than 50-50" success rate of first round quarterbacks.On the other hand, I'm willing to suspend judgment (three cheers for open-ended ambiguity!). Carroll has coached in the NFL and sent three quarterbacks into the draft before Sanchez, two of them top 10 picks. He presumably knows a first round quarterback when he sees one, and he's not obligated to lie; when he says "[Mark] is going against the grain ... he knows this," it suggests this conversation has been going on for weeks behind closed doors, maybe longer, and has involved more professional naysayers than just Carroll. I'd like to think the point of press conferences is to allow the subjects to tell the truth. So I can fault Carroll's timing, maybe, but I don't have a problem with a genuine response trumping decorum, either.
I thought Carroll's reaction was strange, Sanchez is a solid top ten pick and he finishes his degree in the spring.
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